Things I Am Disproportionately Angry About

There's so much in the world to be proportionally angry about because they are, in fact, awful. But what about the things we're disproportionately angry about? Here are a few of mine.

1. Anna Wintour's sunglasses.

Everyone knows how hard it is to be a woman of a certain age in the public eye. As women get older, women are considered less physically attractive, and since women's cash-value is so often correlated with their appearance, this isn't so much of dating/hotness problem as an everything problem. How can a woman in the public eye craft an image that will garner professional respect as she ages?

It's not crazy to think that Anna Wintour might have helped us with this question. The longtime editor of Vogue is known as a ruthless boss (did you see The Devil Wears Prada?), an astute editor and businessperson, and also a style icon. I don't follow style, but I occasionally found myself hopeful we'd get some insight. How will Anna Wintour look at, say 65?

It is personally infuriating to me that the answer to this question is: sorry, ordinary mortals can never see Anna Wintour's eyes again. Ms. Wintour wears her sunglasses everywhere, indoors and out. We're not talking about those lightly tinted glasses that actresses like Diane Keaton wears. We're talking full-on, impenetrable eyewear:

Becoming "Dame" Wintour

At the Tony Awards

Not only does this look ridiculous, the messages is obvious: the skin around the eyes of women over 65 are is so ugly and awful, it should never, ever be seen.

2. Pointless messages on buses.

If you don't ride transit, you might not appreciate why a person like me would get enraged by messages saying things like "Have a Nice Day" or "Happy Holidays." But the reason is simple. The messages space on the front of buses is there for a reason: to tell potential riders which route it is and where the line ends. We need this info, and we often need it in a timely way. When the buses -- as they often do -- choose to alternate the route into with the pointless message, we stand there on the side of the road like idiots, waiting for the "Have a Nice Day" to disappear so something informative like "Route 94: Ossington Station" can appear.

Maybe if you drive everywhere you don't appreciate the problem. The messages alternate every few seconds. Maybe you're thinking: What's the big deal? You seriously can't wait a few seconds? To which my response is: you go stand on the corner of some street in a blizzard, trying to decide whether to run and catch bus X or walk three blocks over to catch bus Y, and look up to see "Have a Nice Day." I guarantee you will find yourself thinking some version of "What kind of pointless insanity is this?"

Plus, you have to ask yourself: Why? Why are these messages even happening? The only answer I've ever been able to come up with is someone thought "Oh, the messages can alternate. Let's put "Have a Nice Day." What kind of deranged mind thinks this is a good idea?

3. Why can't I get my coffee for here?

As regular readers know, I often carry my own coffee mug or espresso cup to avoid using disposable paper coffee cups so I can feel .00000001 percent less responsible for ruining the planet than I already do. Generally, I regard lugging this mug around as a tax on my time and energy: why can't we be like normal countries, where any place you get coffee is a place you can get it in a normal coffee cup that gets washed on site and reused for other customers? But since we're not, and since I hang out a places like libraries where paper is the only option -- OK, I carry my own mug.

Some days, though, I am not going to the library. Some days, I am out and about and I go to a normal coffee shop. Somehow "normal coffee shop" these days has come to mean paper-by-default and ceramic if you ask really nicely. So I ask really nicely.

Unless I make a federal case out of it, though, I often get served in paper instead. I find I have to order "for here," and then say something like "Could I get it in a ceramic cup"? and then sometimes I have to watch the person and gently say again, "Oh, sorry, could I get it in a ceramic cup"?

WTF? Why? Why is this so hard?

A nearby question is: why don't other people want their coffee in ceramic cups? Everyone I see, even if they're having coffee "for here," even if they have a "Save the planet" tote bag, even if they look indignant when they can't recycle their plastic beverage container, has their coffee in paper. I know this is a topic for another day, but what is up with that? Do people like the paper experience? Do they not trust the cafe dishwasher? Inquiring minds want to know.

Anyway, I know these are not real problems. Whatever. Have a Nice Day!

Retribution, The Limits Of Punishment, And The Question Of Unenlightened Motives

Cells of the prison on Alcatraz Island. Posted to Flickr by marine_perez; used under Creative Commons licence.

In last week's New Yorker, the classicist and political scientist Danielle Allen has a searing personal history essay about her cousin Michael, who enters the criminal justice system as a result of minor crimes at age 15, gets derailed in life, and ends up dead -- murdered at a young age.

You should read the whole piece. It is a heartbreaking personal story and also a commentary on race, culture, and the concept of punishment in the contemporary US. Like many young black children, Michael confronts a series of obstacles. Like many young black men, when he gets into trouble, his crimes are punished in ways that are wildly disproportionate.

As Allen explains, among other things Michael was caught up in a serious of specific criminal justice policy changes, motivated by general societal fears and ideas about what the concept of punishment is for. In 1994, eighteen months before Micheal got into trouble, California's Three Strikes and You're Out law had gone into effect: three felonies means twenty-five years to life or a plea deal. In 1995, panic over rising carjackings had led the state to lower the age at which a teenage can be tried as an adult for that crime to 14 years old. Micheal tried to steal a car; the prosecutors found a way to charge him with four felonies based on what the police said were spontaneous confessions at the hospital after he got shot by the car's owner.

From a philosophical point of view, Allen says that California legislators had not only given up on prison as rehabilitation, they had also given up on the idea of prison as retribution. Retribution, as she says, "limits how much punishment you can impose." "Anger drives retribution," she says. "When the punishment fits the crime, retribution is achieved, and anger is sated; it softens."

The policy on carjacking was not about retribution, it was about deterrence. It was driven by fear, and the crafters of the policy were focused on aggregate crime statistics. As Allen says, "The target of Michael’s sentence was not a bright fifteen-year-old boy with a mild proclivity for theft but the thousands of carjackings that occurred in Los Angeles." This is dehumanizing, and wrongly puts the massive burden of society's problems onto a young man's shoulders.

From a philosophical point of view the question about punishment as deterrence versus punishment as retribution often occurs in the context of the debate over ethical theories that are "consequentialist" -- in which we should aim at the production of the most well-being overall -- versus theories that are "deontological" -- in which we should follow certain rules and respect certain specific values.

It is partly because I agree with Allen's perspective on the problems of "aggregative" moral reasoning that I am not a consequentialist; as I've written about, I believe in justice and other values, and I think these values put constraints on our behavior. One of those constraints would concern the appropriate limits of punishment. 

The theoretical debate between consequentialism and deontology is massively complex, and I can't hope to contribute something to that debate here. But I would like to comment on the mood, tone, or quality of motivations associated with retribution versus deterrence.

In my experience, retribution is sometimes informally regarded as a problematic concept, arising from base and unworthy emotions. It is associated with motives that are thought to be low, unenlightened, and uncivilized.

We evolved to have retributive moral judgments, so the thinking goes, because back in the day, evolutionarily speaking, punishing was needed to keep community members in line. But we thinking people should rise above these base motives. Once we know our aim or goal is to make the world a better place, we don't need base motives like anger or retributive judgements. Instead we can cooly calculate which action will have the best effect, and simply do that. Deterrence is seen as "helping" while retribution is seen as abusive.

I once joined a multi-disciplinary audience listening to a speaker talk about ethics and robots. You want your robots to do good things and not bad things, but what does that mean? There was a general sense that the robot-makers wanted to answer the question with consequentialism: do the things that will bring about well-being overall. Aggregate.

In discussion, I tried to explain what seemed to me the importance of moral responsibility, and the inchoate sense I had that moral responsibility was something we do, and should, ascribe to humans. It matters why things are the way they are and who made them that way. Maybe the choices of robots could be tracked back to creators, so that a person would take responsibility for the choices the robot made.

The other people present really did not agree with me -- especially the computer scientists and engineers. They suggested that "moral responsibility" sounded like I wanted to punish people. And wasn't retributive punishment so barbaric? Who needs it? If you're being constructive and positive, you focus on the future. You want good results. Who cares why things are the way they are, except insofar as it's useful for thinking how they should be?

If we'd had more time, I would have tried to explain how, far from being barbaric and unenlightened,  responsibility and retribution fit into what I see as a human way of interacting, that values and respects people for themselves, for who they are, as individuals -- that aggregating people is more like managing them than caring about them.

I realize this brief foray into the cultural moods of retribution and deterrence does not settle the theoretical issues in debates over moral philosophy. But I was so moved by Allen's way of bringing out the potential humaneness of the retributive point of view -- how, far from being base and uncivilized, that framing encourages us to see individual people as worthy of respect, and forces our attention to the limiting of what counts as an appropriate punishment.

What Happened In The 80s, Anyway?

From the 1970s.

The other day a friend of mine mentioned they had something to show me: it was an economics text, they said, from the 70s, and it presented as obvious things like "economics is a moral science" -- meaning, I take it, that economics is inherently concerned with well-being and distributive justice and so on.

I immediately thought "Oh, yes -- of course. That was the 70s I knew." And then I thought, "What happened to that world, anyway?"

I mean the world with ads like the one at the top of the post, showing a little girl in overalls interested in building stuff with lego.

That's the world in which people talked about peace and justice all the time, dressed in goofy clothes like bell-bottoms for fun, and thought that, even though there were a lot of problems, it was possible things were going to get better and that someday we'd all be able to live in diverse neighborhoods in happy prosperity.

This might just be me, but I feel like now in 2015, after so many political and economic problems of the last few years, it's easy to slip into thinking of the narrative as essentially a simple expansion and contraction sort of thing. Like: idealism, following by tough times, producing widespread grasping self-centeredness.

But it's pretty obvious that that isn't it at all. In fact, there's that huge time in between: the 80s and 90s. It's crazy to me now to remember that when I quit math to do a PhD in philosophy in 1997, the world was in the middle of its dot com craze -- people acted like even pursuing a safe-course secure quiet job in scholarship was kind of nuts when you could make a fortune doing something else. Someone in my grad program actually quit to make money day trading.

No, the end-of-the-70s mood was something more complicated. I was born in 1966 and I went off to college in 1984, so I was the wrong age to be a reliable narrator. But what I remember most about that time was the sense that massive social forces had decided that Fun Was Over and it was time to Get Serious.

Hanging around the dorm one day, someone showed me an image that had been going around. It showed one Brooks Brothers' ad from the late 70s and one from the early 80s. They both showed a well-dressed white man from the back, and they were virtually identical, except that the earlier one had slightly longish rakish hair and the 80s one had a perfect, clipped, conservative cut. I remember we all thought, "Oh yeah: that about sums it up."

Half our class was going off to work for Goldman Sachs. Is it any wonder so many Gen-Xers became slackers?

So what happened? What was so great about Hungry Like the Wolf and Dirty Dancing that we had to give up KC and the Sunshine Band?

I'd been pondering these questions lately while listening to some disco, and I happened to read Arthur Chu's excellent essay linking the old anti-disco movement to the new #gamergate one.

Chu reminds us that that even in an era in which Christians "literally believed rock bands were Satanic cults who used backward masking to hypnotize people," the worst and most destructive violence against music "was wrought by guys who just didn’t like disco."

Indeed, people freaked out against disco. Chu mentions us of record burnings and the event in 1979 at Comiskey Park where disco records were burned and the crowd got so riled up they trashed the stadium and the cops had to be called in.

I remember at the time being confused. I wanted to be cool, and the anti-disco people were positioning themselves as the cool kids. But I loved disco. I thought disco was fun and great for dancing and an expression of the Life Force. I was concerned and upset: how could cool figure into my life if cool required being anti-disco?

Chu argues in his essay that the anti-disco force was in a deep sense a force of angry white guys, enraged at the empowerment of women, black people, and gays, and targeting disco because it was a vehicle of expression for just those forces.

The 70s, Chu says, were a time of great conflict and change, and were thus deeply disturbing to the people who stood to lose out somehow through those changes. Those who had a social status to lose lashed out, struck back, not because "disco" was somehow "fake" but because they didn't want the change they thought was coming.

I think he's right. And I think that if he's right, part of the answer to what happened in the 80s has to do with fear and hatred.

It's less a story of tough times leading to renewed self-interest, and more a story of rage and backlash -- a story of people desperate to hold onto and reassert their relative importance over other people.

What Is Up With People And Free Riders?

Hey you, people who get really upset about poor people as free riders -- are you out there? I got a question for you. WTF is up with getting so mad about poor people as free riders?

For those of you playing along at home, free riders are people who benefit from some scheme but don't do their part to make it work. Like if you jump the turnstyle, you're a free rider on the subway.

There's something about the idea that somebody, somewhere, might be getting away with something -- a little leisure time at work, a cake paid for with food stamps, whatever -- that for a certain kind of person is like waving a red flag. You can watch the indignation suffuse their faces as they sputter about Hard Work, Fairness, and Personal Responsibility.

Obviously, I get the abstract issue of the free rider problem. I get how if there are too many free riders things fall apart, and that's a problem. So in certain circumstances you have to act. If no one pays for books there won't be any, and that'll suck. I get it.

But for some perverse reason I do not get, the emotional intensity of the response always seems to me not only inversely proportional to the danger posed but also angriest at the people who might, after all, have a reason to free ride: people who are relatively worse off.

People inclined to laugh it off if a middle-class person is stealing from the cable company are somehow enraged by the possibility that a poorer person might be getting benefits without looking for work, or chit-chatting at their retail job when there are no customers instead of cleaning out the storage bins.

What is up with this? I mean, what difference does it make? You really feel the extra dollar a year or whatever you might get if everyone buckled down is something so sacred it outweighs the good of a shitty life being possibly slightly less shitty?

The one attempt I know to explain why there are strong emotions associated with the free ride problem has its roots in evolution: creatures who live in social groups are likely to live in successful groups, and thus reproduce, if they punish free riders. Many animals have some form of scorn or shunning of those who fail to reciprocate acts like picking parasites.

Though I'm sure there are other complex cultural factors at play, I see no reason to reject the evolutionary explanation as a partial one. But what's interesting to me is that while it might help explain the existence of the indignation against free riders, it doesn't really explain the intensity levels -- I mean, it doesn't really fit with the way the indignation reaches a fever pitch over issues like cake-bought-with-food stamps.

Those are the most impartial examples, in the sense that there isn't even any direct failure of reciprocity. And often they're virtually no threat to anyone's long term well-being. So why the outrage?

I don't know. The only thing I could come up with is that some people just hate poor people -- I mean, they have visceral feelings of irrational hatred for the less-well-off, and since there aren't a wide range of socially acceptable ways to express that hatred, they express it using the concept of the free rider -- which at least uses an argumentative frame that people understand to pose a problem.

Needless to say, many of the examples people get upset about aren't even "free rider" examples at all -- they're just people doing what they need to do to get along, just like everyone else. But even when there's genuine free riding, it's hard for me to get upset about a handful of free riders as long as the system overall is working reasonably well.

Who cares? It's tough to get a system with a lot of people to work reasonably well. You got a few people free riding on it, people who are otherwise struggling? Small fucking price to pay, dude.

I Have An Anger And Negativity Dilemma, And Maybe You Do Too

The Governess, by Emily Mary Osborn (1834 - 1925) (British) (Artist, Details of artist on Google Art Project) [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

I don't know how you feel, but I am sick unto death of people and their constant anger and negativity. Everywhere you go, people are expressing their indignation, calling other people out on shit, making fun of people for doing dumb things, and generally bitching and moaning.

Of course, if you're on the internet -- well, yeah, of course. We all know about "comments" -- but it seems even the mildest things these days seem to provoke people. Friends are angry on Facebook that other friends don't post the right kind of things -- too much humble-bragging, or too many pictures of the kids, or the video someone thought was cute is actually pernicious because Some Reason The Person Didn't Think Of.

But it's not just the internet. I feel like people are complaining all the time, about everything. The other day I was at my favorite exercise class, with my fave instructor, who is awesome, and after as we were all walking out, I happened to be behind three people who had been trying the class for the first time. Man, were they upset! "Oh, she thinks you can stretch your adductors with a twenty second stretch! WHAT BULLSHIT." As one of the other people pointed out, the class is pre-organized by someone else -- but you know what? Even if it wasn't -- wtf? News flash: not everything in the world is going to suit you perfectly. Suck it up.

Often I find myself thinking, "Please: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all." And I honestly think a little shutting up would make the world a better place.

ON THE OTHER HAND.

On the other hand, I also often feel like things are so fucked up in the world that not to be angry and negative is somehow ridiculous. I often feel like I should be more angry. What with the whole broken world and politics and stupidity and the new "books? who has the time??" it seems like anger is the only reasonable response.

In fact, sometimes when people are relentlessly mild-mannered I want to shake them, like Why Aren't You More Angry??

So there it is, the classic dilemma: To be angry or not to be angry, you're screwed either way.

Now maybe you're thinking it's not really a dilemma, because righteous and deserved indignation is different from petty squabbling, and it's the former where anger is justified, and the latter where it isn't.

Surely that is right in some sense, But in practice it doesn't really help, because for me anger is as much of a mood and general stance toward the world as it is anything. I mean, if I want to feel less angry, what I usually do is adopt a more forgiving and easy going attitude about the world in general. I remind myself that people are flawed and confused, and that they need a lot of love and care that they're not getting, and that it's not their fault if they weren't taught how to think things through.

And this way of feeling angry really does work. But then it has the other effect as well, that I can't muster up the requisite anger when it probably makes sense.


Conversely, I can go around being touchy and easily pissed off, and this is a good state of mind to be in when you really ought to tell someone, assertively, Dude, You Have Problems. But then I can't turn it off, and I find myself becoming enraged by asshats who eat and talk in the library, or stand on the left hand side of the escalator -- and even by those who are trying, but failing, to do something nice, like the people who stand *in* the doorway as they're "holding the door," or the stranger who alerted me that I wasn't carrying my backpack on both shoulders and "did I need help"? (??)

Probably non-anger mode is the best for one's individual health and well-being. But how can you be a philosopher if your attitude toward the world is "Oh, it's OK, it doesn't really matter, love is all you need"?

Why So Hateful, Internet? Rage And The New Entreprenurial Self

Hey internet -- why so much hate?

There's a theory out there that the reason people are so hateful to one another on the internet has to do with 1) anonymity, which means internet people can dish out the hate without having to take it and 2) e-distance = dehumanizing.

OK, but actually I'm not buying it.

One reason I'm not buying it is that when it comes to 1), pointing out that people can do something is hardly an explanation of why they do do it. I mean, if someone were to burn down your house, and you said "Why??!" and they said "Well, there was a can of gas and a match and I knew I could get away with it ..." -- It wouldn't be much of an explanation.

But if 1) is useless, 2) just seems false. Why would you bother randomly hurting someone who couldn't feel pain? You wouldn't. Nobody who felt they were dealing with a non-person on the other end would take the time and mental energy to be rude and hateful. Who cares about hating on a machine?  If rage could be dissipated by cruelty-to-machines, we could just set up little stations where people could shout at robots and feel all better and the real world would be a peaceful quiet place.  I hope you share my feeling that is not going to happen.

No -- this kind of rage and hate make sense only when the target is humanized, when you are actively hoping they will be damaged and hurt by what you've said. 

So unfortunately I think what we're seeking is less an explanation of hate on the internet and more an explanation of Generalized Rage Disorder in the Modern World. Internet isn't really "internet hate" but more like Hate, As Seen On The Internet.

Having coffee recently in a neighborhood off my beaten path, I overheard several conversations that seemed to me to suggest possibly explanations for our Generalized Rage Disorder. They all seemed variations on a theme: Mid-Level Guy has to give Entry-Level Supplicant advice on Reeling in Clients/Pleasing Top Level Guy/Making Numbers. They were all expressed in the most hateful tones of condescension and this-is-for-your-own-good ness. 

You'd have to be Mother Theresa not to leave a conversation like that in some kind of rage.

And really, if you think about it, the "entrepreneurial" self" required by today's neoliberal paradigm, in which branding and not being a chump are tops on everyone's to do list, entails that strategies for making other people feel bad are quite rational. The more other people are beaten down, the more you can get out of them for less, and the less threat they are to you in competitive advantage.

If that's where it starts, we know where it goes from there. Everyone knows what it feels like when the world is out to make you feel bad: it gives you a feeling of rage: You want to pass that bullshit on.

It's like Pay It Forward, but with hate instead of love.

If internet hate is like a thermometer measuring our cultural Pan-Directed Anger Syndrome, I'm putting our current readings somewhere around: Call 911! Now! Before it's too late!

Modern Life: Diaspora At Home

Bertha Worms, Homesick for Naples [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

I don't know about you, but I often have a feeling like, "When are we going home from this place?" 

It's not that I have some home I'm thinking about going to. I grew up first in the suburbs of Boston, a regular old East Coast city, and then in the Connecticut commuter suburbs of New York. I have no interest in returning there. The texture of suburban life -- it's always been a problem for me. The houses surrounded by other houses, the driving, the buying a week's worth of groceries all at once -- these things make me feel more alienated, not less.

And it's not because I'm an American living in Canada. I'm not somehow pining for life in the US. It's true that I have an inexplicable and irrational love for my home country, but even when I'm there, I have this same subtle sad feeling of being in exile. But exile from what? 

I've come to think maybe it's part of the modern condition. I mean, I love modernity. A day without miniskirts, shoe-shopping, and cats on the internet is like a day without sunshine. But still, there's this other feeling too.

I wouldn't be the first person to think that living in a modern capitalist society induces, alongside its delights and liberties, a particular kind of alienation. But for me that alienation often feels surprising like homsickness.  Homesickness for a place that never existed, and never will.

It's a lot like the homesickness of people who are actually sick for a home. For example, I recently read Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's excellent novel Americanah -- about a young woman who grows up in Nigeria, moves to the US for university, and ultimately returns to Nigeria. I was struck at her description of her homesickness.

Ifemelu has put together a full and complete life, with bachelor's degree, boyfriend, and blog, and yet ...

" ... and yet, ... [i]t had been there for a while, an early morning disease of fatigue a bleakness and borderlessness. It brought with it amorphous longings, shapeless desires, brief imaginary glimpses of other lives she could be living ... "

I've had that feeling -- especially the sense of unsettledness, of glimpses of other lives. For all of modernity's pleasures, the limitless can be destabilizing. You wonder, "Is there some completely different thing I'm supposed to be doing?"

Of course, for Ifemelu there's a treatment -- "Nigeria became where she was supposed to be, the only place she could sink her roots in without the constant urge to tug them out and shake off the soil." 

But what about the rest of us, who are already at home?

Thinking about this problem always reminds me of the incredible scene toward the end of Portnoy's Complaint, where Alexander Portnoy has gone back to Israel and goes out with an Isreali woman of pride, integrity, and maybe smugness. She's disgusted by his ironic detachment, his making a joke of everything, his relentless self-mockery, his refusal to take himself seriously.  She tells him he is what is all that is shameful in "the culture of the diaspora."

In a rage, Portnoy screams to himself in a silent speech that he'll show her -- he'll give her a venereal disease, he'll send her back to the kibbutz defiled, he'll make her see:

"This is what it's like in the Diaspora, you saintly kiddies, this is what it's like in exile. Temptation and disgrace! Corruption and self-mockery! ... Whining, hysteria, compromise, confusion, disease!" 

You don't have to be Jewish to understand this. I wouldn't trade modern life for anything, but it can be really really difficult, and even hateful, and as I've said before, you have to have a certain kind of tough-mindedness to make it even moderately workable. Temptation and disgrace aren't my particular bugbears, but I know irony and self-mockery. I know that once you're in modernity, you're trapped. You can't get out of it, because native, non-ironic attachment isn't something you can just get ahold of if you don't already have it.

"This is what it's like in exile."  Exile indeed. But for most of us this is home, and it's exile from nowhere. 

Mental Health And Violence Prevention: The Creepiness Factor

There's been a lot of talk these days about improving or paying attention to mental health.  Some of that talk has been happening in the context of preventing violence.  Some of that talk seems to suggest that if perpetrators of violence had had their mental health issues treated properly, the violence could have been prevented.

Some of these things are in the "yes, obviously" category.  Yes, obviously, people should have access to treatment for mental health.  Obviously mental health issues are just as real and serious as other health issues.  Obviously mental health and unhappiness should not be stigmatized.


But I think the way the talk goes in the violence prevention debate goes way beyond the "yes, obviously" category, and goes well into the "creepy" category. 

First of all, if you're talking about relying primarily on mental health treatment to prevent violence, you're talking about going way beyond improved "access" to mental health resources.  You're going to need screenings; you're going to need to be getting in people's faces with tests they do not want; you're going to need surveillance and punishments and all kinds of crazy Panopticon shit.

Sometimes you hear people say that those in certain roles, like teachers, should be attentive to finding people with mental health issues and should taking action.  Have these people been in a classroom?

I mean, first of all, we must be talking about something more than just saying "hey, how are things, if you want to talk, come by my office hours," because what about the people who don't feel like talking because they already have a plan, and the plan is violent?  No, what we're talking about must be a form of "turning someone in," as in alerting some official person, "hey, that person has a problem and needs help, whether they want it or not."

That's bad enough in itself.  In our modern world where your every move is tracked, are you really going to risk being wrong about something like that and screwing up some poor young person's life?

But what's even worse is when you consider what the "signs" are supposed to be.  What are those signs, exactly?  Seeming stressed out, or lonely, or sad?  Being anti-social?  Acting weird?

I got news for you:  all young people are stressed out, lonely, sad, anti-social, and weird some of the time.  Yes, some young people are more stressed out, lonely, sad, anti-social, and weird than others.  And you know what?  That is not a crime.  Last I heard, part of living in a free society is the right to be sad and weird and anti-social.  And to do it without a bunch of people getting in your face about it and demanding you must be "mentally ill" and that you have to get help.

When it's proposed that mental health screening would allow for a world in which a lot of people are armed but few people get shot, I'm always amazed at what the implications are for the idea of being "mentally healthy."  I mean, that seems to me a high bar.  Do these people think it's a sign of illness that in certain situations, under particular stresses, people snap and make bad decisions, decisions they'll regret?  Geez, people -- that's not a sign of being ill; it's a sign of being human.

You put it all together, you get something like this:  anyone who even seems like they might ever, momentarily, not behave in a completely rational way, should be picked out by some responsible figure like a teacher and forced to undergo treatment until their peculiarities are completed beaten out of them.

How creepy is that?  And we haven't even touched on the various difficulties of what our mental health establishment thinks is "healthy," or its poor track record at pathologizing completely normal kinds of behavior, like homosexuality.

Sorry.  Super creepy.

Newsflash: People Like To Fight With Other People

My whole life I've been confused about the whole thing that goes down when guys fight with one another.  You know, like when they fight in a bar, or when they fight because one guy feels insulted by another, or whatever.   

I mean, I get that someone could make you so angry you'd feel you have to hurt them.  And I get that you could be so angry that you would temporarily lose the moral sense, and thus lapse into barbarism and murderous rage. 

But the typical guy's bar fight does not seem to include a lapse into barbarism and murderous rage.  In fact, the participants often do not seem intent on annihilating one another, and they do not seem to have lost the moral sense.  On the contrary, there's a notion of fair play, of honor, of not going too far.

And that's what I could never understand.  Because if you're still operating within the idea of fairness and honor, if you haven't lost the moral sense, then aren't you able to think to yourself, "surely there's a better way to resolve this than hitting another person?" 

And if you aren't operating within the idea of fairness and honor, if you have lost the moral sense, why aren't you going all out?  Why not, for example, kick a guy in the balls, which is what guys tell women to do if they're being attacked?  But your typical guy's fight never includes that. 

It doesn't make any sense.  I don't know if you've read The Mayor of Casterbridge, by Thomas Hardy.  Though brilliant, this is a book filled with grim events and sad surroundings.  You'll have some insight into the character of the main guy Henchard when I tell you that he makes the story happen when, in the first few pages of the book, he auctions off his wife and child while drunk.  

Over the course of the book, Henchard comes to regard as his archenemy a Scottish guy named Farfrae who is a kindly cheerful type, and at a climactic moment, Henchard arranges for them to fight -- to the death, it seems, at least from Henchard's own point of view. 

But guess what he does, this Henchard.  He ties one arm behind his back.  To make it a fairer fight.

When I got to that part I was seriously like "seriously, WTF?"  I mean, if you're thinking fairness, if you're thinking within the moral point of view, why aren't you just calling off the fight in the first place?  Somehow killing Farfrae with both hands is one thing, while killing Farfrae with one hand tied behind your back is another thing entirely?  It's bizarre. 

As time has gone on I've formed a few hypotheses about what is going on with this whole thing.  I'd say the most plausible one is that some people -- of both sexes -- like to fight, and want to hurt one another, but recognize subconsciously that certain things will make fights so unseemly that they won't be allowed to get away with it.  If a fight involves a guy being kicked in the balls, if a fight involves any dramatic mismatch of talents, that's unseemly.  If you're in a friendly environment, you can't fight to kill the other person:  no one will let you get away with that. 

The nod to fairness and honor is there to make sure fights get to happen.  That's what makes it all possible. 

Maybe I'm the only one shocked or surprised by the idea that people actually want to fight and to hurt one another, not only when they're in a murderous rage, and not only as part of some screwy sport, but just as a part of like fun stuff to do. 

Or maybe I'm not.  The great eighteenth-century philosopher David Hume thought that people were naturally inclined to want the best for one another.  "Would any man willingly step on another man's gouty toe?" he asked, to which the obvious answer is "yes, they do it all the time."

But Hume saw in us a wonderful warmth of human nature, in which we desire to see one another prosper.  For all my other faults, I'm basically part of this Humean Kingdom of Friends:  I smile at the smiles of others, and do not like to see other humans sad and suffering. 

The more times goes on, though, the more I realize a lot of people aren't with me here. 

Constructive Anger: Maybe An Oxymoron, Maybe Stupid

Jacob Van Loo, Melancholy.  Via Wikimedia Commons.

They say depression is anger turned inward.  Do you think this is true?  a) Always b) Sometimes c) Never d) All of the above.

Sometimes I feel bad:  melancholic, blue, sad, weighed down.  Sometimes it feels like being depressed, but not always.  Mostly it's like "the world is so fucked up," "what is the point of this exactly?" and "couldn't this whole human experience thing be better arranged?"

Of course, the world really is so fucked up, and life really doesn't have a point, so it's not like having these thoughts is evidence of some kind of problem.  Frustration with the paleness and stupidity of the human experience isn't really depression.  It's more like discontent -- something you don't hear a lot about in the modern pscyho-counseling establishment.  If you're just discontented, I guess you're supposed to just suck it up.

But I got thinking about the whole anger-depression thing after I read this book Monkey Mind, which is a funny memoir about a guy's experience with anxiety.  (Sample situation:  at 16, guy has sex with woman he doesn't really like and isn't really attracted to -- then becomes VERY ANXIOUS about it for A LONG TIME.)

Reading the book, I realized that my bad feelings are really not typically anxiety.  It's not like I'm a worrier.  I'm not worried about the future.  I'm depressed and discontented NOW.  I remembered the whole anger->depression idea, and I asked myself, Do I do that?  Do I turn anger inward?



The objective facts suggest maybe Yes.  I have a hard time staying angry at individual people, even when anger is justified and appropriate.  I get angry for like one second, and then somehow my mind always flashes to thinking about how the whole situation is going to seem ten years from now, at which point it will seem ridiculous and far away.  When you've lost your cool, haven't you always felt stupid later?  I've always thought my approach a pretty rational one, actually.  But maybe it's "turning anger inward."  Who knows? 

Following this line of thought, I asked the next question a philosopher would ask, which is "Well, what is a constructive way to express anger?"  I mean, clearly no one is better off becoming more the kind of person who shouts and throws things and makes mean cutting remarks.  Duh.  So what are you supposed to do exactly?

The google tells me the following things.  When expressing anger, talk directly to the person you're angry with.  Speak in a calm and caring way, and make eye contact.  Use "I" language:  instead of saying "Hey, you almost ran me over you stupid inattentive piece of shit!" say, "I know you mean well but I really feel nervous and vulnerable when you run the yellow light and almost kill me with your car."

As I thought about putting this into practice, I noticed a huge obstacle.  The vast majority of what I'm angry about has nothing to do with the people around me, and has everything to do with the state of the world, with money, with war, with politics, with environmental degradation.  Who am I supposed to look in the eye while I deliver my "I" statements if I'm mad about impending war in Iran? 

What do to?  Maybe I should write a letter?  Let's give it a shot, shall we?

Dear USA,
The absurd and immoral wars and other violence you are initiating and perpetuating around the world are an outrage to decency, you self-important ignorant bully...

Oops, scratch that!  Let's start over:

Dear USA,
I think you mean well, but maybe you didn't realize well over 100,000 civilians have died as a result of the Iraq war.  Have you considered -- wait, scratch that! I often think about them and their families and ... let's just say it makes me feel upset and sad, OK?  I just wanted to let you know.

Dear People of Banking and Finance,
You guys are completely beyond the pale with your lying, fraud, gambling, foreclosure misbehavior and other shenanigans.  Who the fuck do you think you are? 

Oops!

Dear People of Banking and Finance,
I know you're doing your best, but I think you've developed a few regrettable habits lately, and I was hoping you'd take a moment to consider things from our point of view.  I felt really sad and upset when I read about Wells Fargo destroying the home of these people who didn't even have a mortgage.  The effects of the economic collapse of 2008 mean some people are unemployed and I think that makes them unhappy, which makes me unhappy.  If you ever need to talk, I'm here, OK?

Dear Forces that Control the Universe,
WTF is wrong with you?  Disease, hunger, death -- and for what?  Do you just like to see us suffer?  I think you suck.

Oops!

Dear Forces that Control the Universe,
I've heard it said that you have ways that are beyond my understanding and my paltry powers of reasons.  I don't know.  I just wanted to make sure you knew that things are difficult.  We humans need love, food, warmth, companionship, and when we don't get those things - it's like really hard on us OK?  

Conclusion:  I don't think this constructive anger thing is going to work for me.

I Am So Over The "What I Learned" Narrative

Have you noticed the recent prevalence of the narrative of personal growth?  Everywhere you look these days someone wants to tell you a story about how some stuff happened to them and some of it was bad but in the end it was a journey and they learned a lot about life and it was really an occasion for personal growth.

I started obsessing about this when I listened to Ira Glass as the guest on Marc Maron's WTF podcast.  Regular readers know I'm a fan of WTF.  I'm not a fan of This American Life.  That  makes it sounds like I hate TAL, but the truth is I've never listened to it.  It bothers me that the show is neither journalism or story-telling but has elements of both.  I like the truth and I like fiction but you can't run them together like that.  It's annoying. 

Anyway, during the interview, the always irrepressible Marc Maron asked Ira Glass why none of his submissions were ever accepted for the show.  Evidently he, Marc, was rejected a number of times.  Ira Glass basically told Marc to tell him a story he'd submitted and they'd try to figure out why it hadn't been accepted.

Marc told a true story about how he had a fling with this woman who it turned out was already involved with someone, and who had lied about it, and about how the whole thing became a complicated mix of the funny, the horrible, the sad, and the surprising -- that mix which is so characteristic of real life for most people.  Well, for me anyway.  I liked the story a lot.

If I remember correctly, immediately Ira Glass started explaining about how to be a good TAL story, it should have a certain kind of narrative structure, which it lacked.  Ideally, that structure should involve some element of surprising personal development.  He restructured Marc's story so that it featured a pre-event Marc, who was a certain way, followed by the event itself, followed by a description of post-event Marc, who had clearly learned an important lesson from the whole experience. 

I hated the restructuring of the story.  It seemed to me to present a fake moral:  that when bad, weird, or confusing things happen to you, it's primarily an occasion for personal growth.  That in turn seemed to violate something I learned about literature from David Foster Wallace, who was described in The New Yorker years ago as having said that good literature had the function of making him feel "unalone—intellectually, emotionally, spiritually." Literature makes me feel that way too.  The real story made me feel that way.  Bad, weird, and confusing things happen to me, too.  The restructured story didn't make me feel that way.  I don't typically experience those bad weird and confusing things as opportunities for personal growth. 

The more I thought about the personal growth narrative, the more sinister it started to seem to me.  Because the one of the main things about a a narrative of what I learned is that it's not generally a narrative of I knew it all along and the world is an unjust and fucked up place.  But sometimes that narrative is the one you need.  Because the world is an unjust and fucked up place, and sometimes it's that way in the same stupid ways over and over and over again.    

The whole thing made me feel this weird complicity between the political disenfranchisement of regular people and our cultural narratives of positive thinking and learning stuff and all that.  I know it's not the same people -- I mean, the people who want the rich white guys to make all the decisions while the proles are left in the dark are not the same people who want every narrative turned into a narrative of personal growth.  Probably these groups want as little to do with each others as possible. 

But the personal growth narrative, at least when it becomes common, has the effect of muting the narrative of rage, of justified anger, of ordinary opinion, of complaining, and even just of I-Have-No-Idea-What-Is-Going-On-With-That.  Sometimes those are the narratives you really need.  Like, now maybe.

Is Anger, Like, So Over? Or, What Happened To Generation X?

Remember Nirvana?  The band?  "Smells Like Teen Spirit?"  "Heart-Shaped Box?" 

It's only been about twenty years since their massive popularity hit its peak, but in some ways their era and their music feels more foreign and far away than that of less recent musical artists.  Exhibit A:  The Talking Heads.  See also Cyndi Lauper, Prince, and Michael Jackson's "Thriller."  All feel very much "of our time."

If you go to the gym, or shop, or hang around cafes, you can hear music from pretty much every decade since the 60s.  How often have you been out and said to your friend or to yourself, "Oh my god, remember that song?"

But when's the last time you heard Nirvana?  I don't think I've heard a Nirvana song since I last listened to one of their CDs in around 1997.  Where is the love, people?


I have a theory about why you never hear Nirvana these days.  My theory is that Nirvana was a genuinely angry, angry band.  And something weird is going on with anger.  Something frightening.  Anger is disappearing.  Or, rather, its being co-opted.  It's disappearing among the youth, and being taking over by white middle-aged men who feel like they deserve better and want someone to blame.  Old resentment is on the rise; youth anger is on the wane. 

Obviously I don't mean private anger, like when you're enraged at your family, friends, and lovers for buying the wrong kind of cookies or ignoring you or posting your secrets on Facebook.  That kind of anger will always be with us.

I mean public anger.  The anger of rebellion, of why should I play by your stupid rules, of everyone's a goddamn hypocrite, of looking at adults and thinking, how could you people fuck up the world so completely? What the fuck is wrong with you?

I've had occasion to think about this off and on for years, since as a university professor I spend a lot of time with 18-22 year-olds.  I'm often surprised by their lack of anger -- at their lack of rebellious rage at their parents, at their institutions, at the world in which they find themselves.  Generally, I find today's young people to be temperamentally pretty kind, quite cooperative, and mostly constructively interested in making the world a better place. 

Those are all excellent qualities.  You could have them and also be angry at the same time.  But that's not the feeling I get.  The feeling I get is that it would seem stupid, naive, and childish these days to get all riled up and pissed off, to wear crazy punk rock clothes, to raise hell for no reasons, to create a band like The Sex Pistols. 

Speaking of which, and as if to prove my point, the Wikipedia entry for The Sex Pistols says that they in 2006 the surviving members refused to attend a ceremony inducting the band into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, quote, "calling the museum 'a piss stain,'" unquote.

I was reminded of the anger situation this morning as I was thinking about the late, great but short-lived Spy Magazine and how there really isn't anything like it any more.  Spy was a mix of satire, goofiness, ironic detachment, mean-spirited attacks, vicious take-downs, and actual journalism.  I wasn't surprised to learn that the editors cited as an inspiration H. L. Mencken, who personified public anger at pretty much every stage of his life.

When did comedy leave behind "Log-Rolling In Our Time," a regular Spy feature that showcased actual examples of authors giving one another lame mutually adoring blurbs for one another's books, and become Hangover 2?


What do you think the story is?  Clearly there's plenty of stuff to be angry about. 

Is it that the stuff these days is so overwhelming that it transcends anger, turns in on itself, and becomes anxiety and depression, and that's why there's so many young people on psycho-pharmaceuticals?   

Is it that the world has become so frightening and risky -- so stratified, so winner-take-all -- that sheer survival leaves no mental room for anger?

Is it that young people are angry, but anger is too hard to express in their world, in which the internet and social networking make every gesture and every word open to the analysis of everyone on the planet?

Is it all of the above?

So you can see, my theory is that you don't hear Nirvana because Nirvana doesn't fit with our new no-anger youth ethos.  I was amused to read today on Wikipedia that Nirvana was considered the "flagship band" of Generation X, of which I am a proud member. 

Maybe you remember, we Gen-Xers were supposed to be the great slackers of the world. Everyone was enraged by the way we wanted to just sit around coffeeshops all day (before the internet! we brought books, and paper and pens!), wearing our Doc Martins and smoking cigarettes and talking and shooting the shit, instead of respectably hauling our asses of to McDonalds to get a crappy job. 

I've always thought that insofar as this portrait of Gen X was accurate, it actually showed we had good values.  We wanted to talk about things; we thought it was an outrage that we'd be paid minimum wage to make crappy burgers for some megachain; and we were willing to have roommates and to live without creature comforts like cars and TVs because we didn't have any money. 

It makes me miss the world in which all that was possible.  It makes me miss Spy Magazine.  And it makes me miss Nirvana.

My Life Force Theory Of Human Nature

L. A. Lakers fans, after a big win.

Where we are going with this post:  an explanation of why people riot when their team wins.

Where we are starting with this post:  a consideration of some unified theories of human behavior. 

In the middle:  an explication of that under-recognized and unappreciated force of human existence:  The Life Force.  

When it comes to theories of human behavior, it always drives me crazy when people say that what humans really want out of life should be understood as just "pleasure" or "happiness."

You hear the first most often when people are talking about motivation, the idea being that humans are primarily motivated by the seeking of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. 

You hear the second when people are trying to give big psychology theories about the nature of desire and its role in our lives.  There's a whole new mini-cottage industry now of books about happiness and how to achieve it.

But I'm just not buying either of these.  Can't you want things knowing they'll bring you displeasure and unhappiness?  Think about the last time you broke up with someone, or were broken up with, romantically.  In the immediate aftermath, couldn't you have a burning, itchy, crazy desire to call that person, even while knowing that calling them will make you not just miserable but also wildly unhappy?

And I've talked about this before, but can't you sensibly want children even if you are convinced by the studies that show taking care of them is boring and displeasurable and parents are less happy overall than non-parents?  If you're thinking about having kids, are pleasure and happiness really the only things you're considering?  It seems bizarre to me to think that they would.

Anyway, there is one basic desire, one burning human drive, that these theories always seem to me to leave out.  That is:  the need to feel alive.  I call it The Life Force.

The way the Life Force manifests itself in our modern western culture, when your Life Force is high, you're engaged.  You're full of appetites.  You want to do stuff:  make lentil soup, improve your golf game, learn German.  You have a burning desire not only to be alive, but to imprint yourself on the world, to make things happen. 

When your Life Force is low, you don't see the point of living.  You don't care much what happens.  You have no need, or you're afraid, to exert your force, to exert your identity, on the world around you.

If you're at all in thrall to the harmony myth of human nature, you might think that The Life Force is good and its absence is bad.  But I don't think that can be right.  Because much as The Life Force can be the amazing power of creativity, it can also be the insane passion of rage, or the rabid desire for destruction.

If you're angry at someone and you sink into sadness and depression that is Low Life Force.  But if you lash out in a rage, and shout, and throw dishes, that is actually High Life Force:  you're imprinting yourself on the world, being you, and making things happen.  It's just that those things are bad.  

High Life Force might be good for you, but it might be bad for the rest of the world.  Because the desire to make things happen, it doesn't really distinguish between the good and the bad.  It just wants.

The Life Force involves wanting things, and it is often disturbing to me the way wanting things feels good.  Because as we all know, wanting things can be as frustrating as hell.  But then when you're faced with the opposite -- with NOT wanting things -- you're like Oh, wait, sorry, can you bring back the wanting please?

The desire to eat more food than is good for you:  frustrating.  Insufficient desire to eat enough food than is good for you:  heartbreaking.  Did you ever read stories by cancer patients who've lost their appetite and need marijuana just to be able to eat at all?  It makes insufficient desire seem like the saddest thing in the world.  Same thing for sex.  If you think wanting is bad, think about not wanting for about five minutes.  You'll change your mind.

In my theory of The Life Force, the desire, the need, to have The Force, and thus feel that want and desire, is basic and doesn't come from something else.  The problem arises when you have it, and now you have this need to make things happen.  It's a need that can sometimes be met in a constructive way, but not always.

Everyone's familiar with the pattern when it comes to sex.  When you want sex, you feel alive, even if you also feel frustrated.  And then if you get to have sex, you're making things happen, and that feels fantastic.  After, your Life Force is dissipated, especially if you've had an orgasm.  Orgasms:  very pleasurable, but they do not add to your life force.  After, you have to wait a little for the secret vial in your heart to replenish itself. 

The way The Life Force functions in a consumer culture like ours is particularly interesting, because in that culture, shopping mimics the Life Force pattern of sex without the attendant difficulties.  You set out:  you're wanting, you feel alive.  You buy:  you're making things happen, and it feels good.  After, instead of the dissipation from orgasm, you have clothes/shoes/toys/food to bring home and enjoy.  The Life Force just settles itself down very nicely.  When you think about it that way, it's not surprising that the average credit card debt in the US is almost 16,000 dollars. 

But getting back to the rioting.  I don't watch sports, but it is not hard for me to picture the Life Force pattern of important sporting events.  Was there ever more of a context for wanting and for feeling alive?  But since you're watching, there's not much outlet for making things happen.

If your team loses, your Life Force dissipates and you feel like crap and you have to wait for time to pass for your Life Force to come back.  But if your team wins, your Life Force goes through the roof:  BAM!.  What are you going to do with all that?  You've suddenly got to make things happen. 

And if you're with eight million other people in exactly the same mood, and you're out on the street, does it surprise you that those things include destroying things and setting cars on fire?  Well, it doesn't surprise me. 

The pleasure and happiness theories don't do so well explaining the winning rioters.  Destroying cars isn't on most people's bucket list, and no one expects it to bring peace and contentment. 

But the Life Force theory of human nature makes the whole thing very obvious and clear.

We Love The Bad, The Stupid, The Vapid, The Obsequious

A poster for the movie "Tilt," starring Brooke Shields.  Who knew?

What's the Parisian equivalent of a "dive bar"?  I don't really know, but I was in one the other day.  This being Paris, it wasn't so much a dive bar in the sense of being dark, noisy, and full of drunks.  It was more a place for drinking, buying lottery tickets, placing bets on things, watching sports, and pretending to do all these other things while really flirting with the cute Chinese waitress.  It was also a place for playing pinball. 

You remember pinball, right?  Its heyday was just before PacMan, back in the paleo-agonic era.  Pinball machines are endangered now, but maybe you've seen a few of them tucked away in their modern sanctuaries: hipster bars.  Instead of a "screen" they have an actual ball that bounces around; instead of a "joystick" or "game controller" there are these flipper things. 

I always try to avoid saying things that make me sound like an old man, like "You kids with your Wiis and your X-boxes and your games of war and shooting-up-prostitutes, you don't know nothing."  But in this case what else can I say? 

I could go on and on listing points in favor of pinball.  The main one relevant here is that it is possible to be sexy and cool while playing it.  Video games, not so much.  Using a joystick looks ridiculous, and the new machines, where you have to wave your arms around to make the motion of a tennis racket/baseball bat/fist/whatever -- they're even worse.

Part of the appeal of pinball is that you have to interact in a masterful but gentle way with a 300 pound machine.  Nudging the machine a bit:  essential strategy.  Nudging the machine too much:  TILT! your ball is over.

Anyway, in my dive bar there were these guys playing pinball.  And one guy had on a nice suit, and nice shoes, and he had a nice haircut and a reasonably intelligent look on his face.  He also had -- what's the equivalent of road rage for pinball?  He had TILT RAGE. 

He could barely contain his anger.  Every time he lost it was like a new tragedy.  He hit the machine; he stomped his feet; he swore at the people around him.  I don't think he every really technically tilted the machine.  He was just really pissed off about losing.

And now we're finally getting to the point of this post, which is that I found this an attractive quality.  I didn't find it an admirable quality.  I think getting really upset about a pinball game is stupid.  This is a case where a quality I find attractive in a person is not a quality I find sensible or good, and isn't even a quality I'd be looking for in a friend.

I think this situation -- that what's attractive isn't always what's good -- is more common than people would like to admit.  When people date the Bad, the Stupid, the Vapid and the Obsequious ... it really gets under everyone else's skin. 

In particular, when a woman dates a Bad or Stupid Guy, there's often a whole narrative about it: Oh, She Must Have Been Mistreated As A Child and That's Why She Likes Him. She needs to regain her self-esteem.  The implication is that the normal healthy person finds attractive in the opposite sex the qualities of goodness, patience, and generosity.  But isn't this contradicted by the facts?  As I've mentioned before, Keith Richards has to fight them them off with a stick.  Nothing against Keith, but it's not because he's a Good and Virtuous Man.

This whole problem had been much on my mind before seeing Tilt Rage Guy, because I'd been thinking about it as it arises in the books of Anthony Trollope.  I've just been rereading The Palliser series.  Because they concern the English aristocracy, these novels contain a lot of plot elements having to do with the marriages and marriage-longings, suitable and unsuitable, of various young persons. 

In The Prime Minister, poor Emily Wharton is swept off her feet by one Ferdinand Lopez, a man we know ahead of time to be fast-talking, good looking, and easily angered, and a man we later come to know as truly despicable.  Of course Emily's family is deeply mystified by her choice, and also angered by her rejection of Mister Suitable, a long standing family friend.

I was talking over Emily's problems with my friend and he pointed out how many of Trollope's heroines were in the same situation.  They love the scapegraces, the smooth talkers, the passionate lovers and the cutters of fine figures.  The upstanding and quiet young men everyone else approves of for them?  Meh, not so much. 

It drove everybody crazy then, and it's driving everybody crazy now.

The Former Angry Young Man: A Gendered Character Study

Cool weird old poster of an Angry Young Man.  By James Montgomery Flagg [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Maybe you've encountered this guy:  the Former Angry Young Man.

When he was young, the Former Angry Young Man (FAYM) (yes, "Man," we're getting to that) was full of piss and vinegar.  He was ambitious for himself, and idealistic for his world.  He took shit from nobody.  He spoke truth to power; he raged against injustice.  He had no time for niceties like planning birthday parties, listening to long pointless stories, or being nice just for the hell of it.

The FAYM, though, has changed.  Now that he's older, he recognizes that "no man is an island."  Maybe he went through a divorce, and needed his friends.  Maybe he had kids, and realized that someone has to buy the birthday cake.  Maybe he got sober and realized he was being an asshole.  Now, he knows that life is too short for all that negativity.  Now, he knows what really matters:  other people.

This narrative has attractive elements, and the classic FAYM doesn't hesitate to play them up.  The idea of the FAYM brings together worldly sophistication and down home values.  It has the sheen of learning and wisdom.  Like the parable of the prodigal son, it engages our love for the reprobate who finally learns his lessons.  It makes a person seem fun and good at the same time, which is never easy.

But attractive or not, the FAYM thing is a guy kind of thing.

For one thing, young or old, nobody likes an angry woman.

The only teensy loophole to this law is that if you're very attractive or very young your anger can be interesting and legitimate, because it is sexy.  When Courtney Love got plastic surgery back in the 90's, she said she had to do it because she was angry, and only physical beauty would legitimate her anger.  Like, if a babe goes on MTV and shouts a lot it's "hot" and interesting but if some regular looking girl does it she's just a mess and someone we feel sorry for.  Say what you want about Ms. Love, but that is true.   

For another thing, some of the stuff that happens to guys to trip the "no man is an island" brain wire in men happens to girls when they're like 14. 

The reason I got thinking about this is that I'd been reading or hearing about some FAYMs and kind of half-heartedly absorbing their narratives, and it kind of came to me like a flash:  you know, I'm not Formerly Angry.  I'm Angry right now.  All the stupid idiocy in the world, the wars, the pointless suffering, the stupidity ... I'm probably ten times more angry about that now than I was when I was younger. 

Where we're going to go with that Cultural Icon-Wise, I don't know.  The "Currently Angry Middle-Aged Woman" doesn't have a lot of style or panache.  

I guess you'll have to just call me a Feminazi Boner-Killer. 

I For One Welcome Our WTF Overlords: Marc Maron And Modern Life

Marc Maron

I recently became obsessed with the podcast "WTF with Marc Maron."  I knew as soon as I heard Maron as the celebrity guest on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me (another of my obsessions) that I would have to check out his podcast, and I knew as soon as I'd finished listening to my first episode that I would be obsessed with it and would have to listen to every episdode, in chronological order.

In the WTF podcast, Maron interviews comedians.  But saying that the WTF podcast is a comedian interviewing comedians is like saying that The Wizard of Oz is about a spot of bad weather.  Because these are not so much interviews as mini-plunges into the darker and scarier parts of human nature.

These plunges are made more bearable by the fact that it's a "comedy podcast" -- so you never really know to what degree the performers are joking, embellishing, exaggerating on purpose.  In fact one of the most squirmy moments I had listening was when one interviewee said something sad or mean or something and then said "I'm just kidding."  Thus immersing me into the possibility that the rest of what she'd been saying was just true.

Maron says being a comic is about being "autonomous, angry, truthful, and funny."  He prods, pokes, bribes, nudges, and aggresses his guests 'til they, too, are being autonomous, angry, truthful and funny -- often about subjects like love, lust, envy, neediness, and despair that people just don't discuss in public, and maybe don't discuss at all.  I've always thought the great thing about comedians is that they will say things other people will not say, and here it is true.

The "I'm just kidding" moment comes during a frank discussion of the horrors of marriage:  married couple Annabelle Gurwitch and Jeff Kahn come in together to talk about the day to day misery, anger, envy and moments of petty revenge that come from living with and parenting with another person.  Maron opens episode one by talking about stealing from Whole Foods in an act of rage against everything they stand for.  In episode seven, a comedian confesses to using made up stories of the deaths of loved-ones to get girls to have sex with him, and there's an in-depth discussion of the way marital counseling is set up to fail.

That whole "truthful" thing -- it shows how close this kind of comedy is to philosophy.  Long time readers will recall that I've commented on the parallels before, writing about Tina Fey.  Actually, I think we professional philosophers would do better if we talked more about things like stealing from Whole Foods.

And indeed, Maron says he's "tackling the most complex philosophical question of our day - WTF?"

Note that WTF? isn't the most important philosophical question of all time, it's the most important philosophical question of our day.  Doing a little inspired cultural and intellectual history, Maron says in episode one that the great philosophical question once was, "What is the meaning of life?"  Then for a long time it was, instead, "How am I being used and am I okay with that?"

"How am I being used and am I OK with that" --that's brilliant.  It's Kantian respect for autonomy, Lockean individualism, and the dismal science, all rolled into one.

Maron says the question for the coming era is going to be WTF?  Actually, he says, WTF is two questions.  It's the WTF of shock and indignation, like, what do you mean you're proposing that people with no health insurance be allowed to just die? WTF?!!  But it's also the WTF of "Whatever" or "Yeah, Why The Hell Not?" As in, should I eat this whole carton of ice cream right now? Yeah, sure, WTF.

Can I just say that this sounds like a huge fucking improvement?  I mean, the how-am-I-being-used-and-am-I-OK-with-that era has been really grim.  The possibility that it's going to be replaced by WTF -- I don't know what that'll be like exactly, but it sounds like it could be OK.  In fact, it's a possibility that makes me feel more hopeful about the future than I have in a long time.

If that's what's coming, bring it on please.

A Guy Walks Into A Lingerie Store ... Studies In Gender Miscommunication

The other day I was in a kind of fancy bra and lingerie store, completing a complex transaction.  Unfortunately it was not a "complex transaction" as in "Oh, but don't you have this in the chantilly lace in Tequilla Sunrise Orange?" It was just a complex transaction in the most boring way, as in "I'd like to return this and use the credit to order these other things you don't have in stock."

It was one of those situations where the woman who knows how to do the transaction was in the dressing room providing some Excellent Customer Service of the kind you get in these kinds of stores, and the woman at the register was a little befuddled.  I wasn't in a rush though:  the afternoon was broiling and the store was air-conditioned.

As we stood there together, me the model patient customer and she the increasingly nervous sales person, a guy came in, alone.  No big deal, but this guy was wearing mirrored sunglasses, responded to an offer of assistance with a gruff "no," and went on to . . . well, I'd have to say he went on to fondle the panties in a box that was sitting on the cashier table. 

We stood there aware of his fondling as we tried to sort out the transaction.  I found myself feeling creeped out and nervous, but initially unable to explain to myself why I felt creeped out.  I mean, if you're going to buy some panties, touching them to see how they feel, checking the texture and size, is completely normal and appropriate -- whether you're shopping for yourself or for a gift for some woman.  What's the problem exactly?

What was the problem? 

Well, part of the problem is the way certain guys sometimes give you a feeling like they are going to fly off the handle.  Sometimes you get a feeling from a guy that even though they're acting very patient and nice for the moment, something is going to make them snap and when they do it's going to be bad.  One of the things that makes guys snap, it seems, is rage over sex -- I mean, the feeling that they want to have it with someone and no one wants to have it with them.  So a guy with mirrored sunglasses on, experiencing who knows what mood, in this lingerie store with all these women -- is he going to fly off the handle somehow?

This is the sort of thing that you'd think statistics and empirical facts might help you assess, but for me, somehow it doesn't really.  I mean, it might be statistically uncommon for a guy to fly off the handle in that particular way, but somehow that fact -- it doesn't make it feel different.  For me, I just sometimes get the feeling like a certain guy is going to fly off the handle at a certain moment, and I get scared.  And I'm a relatively fearless person, generally.

You often hear women say "I was scared to say No."  And you might wonder:  why exactly?  Did someone threaten you?  Was there a history of violence?  Often the answer is Yes. But even when the answer is No, guys can be scary.  This feeling one gets from them when they're angry may be part of the explanation for why they can be scary, and especially in those kinds of contexts.

On this occasion, the guy was perfectly patient and polite; he waited 'til we were done, then paid for his panties.  And he was probably just shy and nervous.  But honestly, mirrored sunglasses indoors?  It sure makes you think a guy has something fishy going on.

Sexism And Misogyny Are Not The Same Thing

What would a post on women and France be without a picture of Catherine Deneuve?

I just returned from a short trip to Paris, France.  To me, one of the most puzzling things about Paris is that even though it's a bustly city with a ton of people, crowded subways, and -- let's face it -- somewhat uncomfortable and cramped interiors, being there is somehow relaxing.  Why is this?

There are a few obvious things.  Like, Paris is well-organized and beautiful.  Signs tell you not only when the next subway train is coming but when the one after that is coming as well.  Just walking along one of those tidy streets, with those lovely building facades, all a little different but sort of the same -- very relaxing.  When there are a lot of people somewhere, you can guarantee that someone has thought out how it should work.

The ads are interesting, and pretty, and they aren't everywhere.

There are things that are less obvious, though, and I think one of them is that while French culture may be sexist, it isn't really misogynist.  That is, while men and women are treated and regarded differently, and women do a lot of the domestic duties (often in addition to working) and there are the same kind of gender imbalances we have here in North America, in France, people basically like women, feel warmly toward them, and enjoy having them around.

This liking of women -- it's something that seems on the wane here in North America.  There's this whole guy thing here that I don't really understand but that seems to catch us in this double-bind.  If you're a woman who doesn't put a lot of effort into pleasing men with your appearance, then men are hostile on grounds that you're not pleasing them -- or, sometimes, you're just invisible.  But if you're a woman who does put a lot a lot of effort into pleasing men with your appearance, then you're either some kind of tease -- and men are hostile over being baited -- or you're a slut -- and men are somehow even more outraged by that than by being baited.

Talk about a no-win situation.

Now, I don't mean "all guys" or "most guys" do this -- certainly not.  But there's enough guys expressing these views, in the right contexts, for it to be a real thing.  Think about women who are on TV.  If they're not dressing up, forget it.  But if they are dressing up, forget it on the other side:  they're "inappropriate" or "slutty" or whatever.  And if you're dressing up and you look really good and you're unavailable, that's it:  you have to be brought down a peg.

Actually I was thinking about this the other day when that annoying article came out in the New York Times about how these studies had "shown" that attached men find women who are ovulating less attractive than non-ovulating women, even though for unattached men it's the reverse.  This was based on attached men rating some woman questioner as less sexy if they were attached and more if they weren't.  The conclusion the researchers came to was something like, See how mother nature makes it possible for us to be in long term steady relationships!

I'm always so irritated by articles like this.  I mean, consider the very first paragraph of the article:

"The 21-year-old woman was carefully trained not to flirt with anyone who came into the laboratory over the course of several months. She kept eye contact and conversation to a minimum. She never used makeup or perfume, kept her hair in a simple ponytail, and always wore jeans and a plain T-shirt."

Are you seriously telling me that these guys think that being quiet and keeping your eyes down can't be a way of flirting?! Do they live under rocks, these people?  I mean, I get that for the purposes of the study, all that matters is that she acted the same way with each guy, but honestly, can't you just say that?  And that jeans-and-a-simple-ponytail business.  As if the whole Playboy empire wasn't based on the sexiness of the girl next door.  How stupid.

And then the conclusions, geez.  I mean, sure, maybe that's what made the guys rate the woman lower.  But couldn't there be a bunch of other hypotheses?  Like, they found her more attractive, but because they felt not free to flirt with her, they wanted to take her down a peg?  "Meh, big deal, she's not so great."  Really, who knows? But isn't this at least as plausible?  How come we always have to leap to these stupid conclusions about What Mother Nature Intended?

OK OK back to the theme.  My point is just that you can have sexism without hostility toward women, and that for whatever reason, we seem to have some hostility toward women 'round these parts.  I haven't even mentioned the most uncomfortable hypothesis lurking here:  that we have more hostility because we have less sexism, that somehow it's the demand for equality that is making everyone so mad.  I haven't discussed it because I don't know if it's true, and I don't even know how one would figure out whether it's true. 

But as to the hostility itself, trust me, if you're a woman, it kind of wears you out.